Essential DS9 Episodes

I am planning on watching Deep Space 9 again, however, I want to do it within the next 2 months, 1 episode a day. What are the most essential/important episodes I should watch?

I found a thread that had a list of the Dominion War Episodes: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=124492 , I will be watching these episodes, however, I also want to watch many other episodes which are very good, such as 'Past Tense', 'The Visitor', and 'The Sound of her Voice'.

If you've seen the whole series, you don't need us to make a list for you. Stick in season 1, disc 1 and choose an episode you feel like watching. If you don't skip over it then on to disc 2 and so forth.

For funsies, my final list is at the end; my interim lists come first, so you can see which episodes were easy to delete.

Well, this got rid of most of the duds and a few episodes that I like, but that just aren't quite relevant to the rest of the series. I've left in the gaps where I deleted stuff to make it a bit more readable.

Season 7:
“Image in the Sand”
“Shadows and Symbols”
“Afterimage”
“Take Me Out to the Holosuite”
“Chrysalis”
“Treachery, Faith, and the Great River”
“Once More Unto the Breach”
“The Siege of AR-558”
“Covenant”
“It’s Only a Paper Moon”

Well, here we are. This was an interesting exercise and I'm not really happy with the results, to be honest. On the one hand, I think I might be able to come up with a better list if I devoted a lot more time to it. On the other hand, I'm not sure I could really come up with a satisfactory "Abridged DS9" episode list in 60-ish episodes. I do like the results of my first culling– but if you're gonna watch 150 episodes, you might as well watch all 173.

The final list's episodes fall into three categories:

1) The Big Ones: The major events, the big plot advances. Almost all of the two-parters are in here. I omitted Past Tense even though I think it's really good because it has few repercussions and there are just too many other really good episodes that tie into the larger arc more explicitly. (I do think Past Tense fits into the thematic arc of DS9 very well, and is a key episode in Bashir's development, but still.) I omitted The Maquis for similar reasons. In fact, as I did with the Mirror Universe arc, I omitted the entire Maquis and Eddington arc, simply because there wasn't enough space.

2) The Masterpieces: Duet, The Wire, The Visitor, Far Beyond the Stars, In The Pale Moonlight... hours of television that really approach art.

3) The Little Guys: These choices reflect my personal preferences much more than the rest of the list. These are kinda the "best of everyday DS9"; these episodes aren't major turning points within the narrative of the show, nor are they extraordinary hours of television, they're just great DS9, representative of most of the rest of the series.

The list is very skewed towards the Dominion War, in a way that's not representative of the series as a whole. It also is less representative of the lighter episodes of DS9, some of the only instances of Star Trek doing comedy effectively. As I said, it lacks the Maquis/Eddington Arc, the Mirror Universe arc, as well as the Trill Arc, such as it is, and all of the Ezri episodes in season 7. It's also biased against Klingon episodes, since I personally think that several of them ("Blood Oath," "The Sword of Kahless," and "Once More Unto The Breach") are relatively weak, so it's better to remove the whole arc from the list. Lastly, it is very much biased towards later seasons and against the first two (much to my chagrin; I really wanted to include "Past Prologue," or "Babel," or "If Wishes Were Horses," or "Cardassians," or "Progress"...).

Actually, though, this was kinda fun; I think I might develop extensive arc lists; the Dominion War seems pretty well covered, but I'd love to create a Bashir's Arc list, or a Odo's Arc list. Maybe later this summer...

Wow, thanks for doing that much work. I will definitely be sticking to the episodes in the final list. Whenever I have time to watch more than a single episode a day, I will throw in the episodes from the first list.

And yeah, character arcs sound awesome, especially Bashir. A Dukat arc would also seem plausible.

Wow, thanks for doing that much work. I will definitely be sticking to the episodes in the final list. Whenever I have time to watch more than a single episode a day, I will throw in the episodes from the first list.

And yeah, character arcs sound awesome, especially Bashir. A Dukat arc would also seem plausible.

Click to expand...

I'm working on those arc lists; takes time, and I wanna do it right!

Looking back at my list, though, I'm really, really surprised that I didn't include "Necessary Evil." If you have to switch one out, I suppose I'd recommend ditching "Honor Among Thieves" in favor of "Necessary Evil," but then you lose what I believe to be the only O'Brien-episode on the list. So I say you should just add it in anyway.

I'm also surprised I didn't include "Waltz," or "The Collaborator," or "Things Past," though I think I decided early on to leave that category of episodes to be represented by "In The Pale Moonlight" and "Duet," and, to a lesser extent, "Honor Among Thieves" (killing three birds with one stone on that last one, being an Ambiguous episode, an O'Brien episode and a Little Guy).

I'm pretty sure the number of his "essential" episodes far exceeds the 60-ish you had allotted, but it's still interesting. I don't agree with all of his assessments (for example, he's in the "'Nor The Battle To The Strong"-is-meh" camp) but it's pretty good overall. Actually, I just noticed that he feels that "Far Beyond The Stars" is not essential; just lost a lotta points with me, buddy. Bleh, I just read his review of "FBTS," and, boy, has it left a bad taste in my mouth...

Emissary
Duet
In The Hands of the Prophets
Way of the Warrior
The Visitor
Nor the Battle to the Strong
Trials and Tribble-ations
Far Beyond the Stars
In The Pale Moonlight
Inquisition
The Siege of AR-558
Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges